Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, also referred to as machine-type communication (MTC), is the communication of data between machines with little or no human interaction. It is expected that in the near future, a large percentage of network traffic may originate from MTC devices. Therefore, MTC has lately attracted the interest of the wireless communications industry.
Signaling protocols and resource management procedures in existing networks were designed to accommodate human-generated traffic. However, the traffic generated by MTC devices differs from most human-generated traffic. Using the same signaling protocols for MTC devices can lead to inefficient radio resource utilization.
The amount of signaling required to set-up or terminate a communication session is one area of concern. The existing signaling protocols used to setup and terminate sessions were conceived of to support transmission of large amounts of data at high data rates. An MTC device, in contrast, will typically send small amounts of data infrequently at low data rates. Thus, the signaling overhead to establish a connection for MTC devices will be greater and consume more radio resources in relative terms than for human-generated traffic.
Uplink power control is another area of concern. The existing uplink power control mechanism, as specified within the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard 36.133 is too complicated for M2M communications and is not optimal because it does not take into consideration specific characteristics and behaviors of MTC devices.
Accordingly, there continues to be a need for improvements in signaling and radio resource control procedures for M2M communications to improve energy efficiency and resource utilization efficiency.